I guess this movie has become pretty polarizing -- or maybe we're just in the midst of a backlash spurred by extremely positive reviews and extremely high audience expectations -- but this worked just as well for me on second viewing as it did on the first. This time around it really reminded me of A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, from the absentee parents to the amorphous supernatural menace to the teens attempting -- with the kind of naively optimistic stupidity that only teenagers have -- to kill this unkillable creature. Above all, though, the strongest tie to NIGHTMARE is the film's dreamy atmosphere. IT FOLLOWS is clearly set in and around Detroit, but exactly when is anyone's guess; the cars, houses, and fashions could be from any time in the last 30 years, and there are almost no computers or cell phones (except for one that inexplicably looks like a clam shell).

A similarly hazy vibe permeated director David Robert Mitchell's last film, THE MYTH OF THE AMERICAN SLEEPOVER, as if the entire movie was taking place in someone's half-ed recollection of a great night they had fifteen years earlier. Part of what I love about IT FOLLOWS is the way it feels like a dark spiritual sequel to its predecessor. I often have dreams that turn on a dime into a nightmare, and IT FOLLOWS captures precisely the sensation when tranquil dreams slip suddenly into outright horror. Jay (Maika Monroe) has what looks like a fairly pleasant sexual encounter with a boy she likes. She's laying in the backseat of his car, flicking at a wildflower, talking about her childhood fantasies of dating (a sort of dream within a dream). Everything seems perfect. And then suddenly... it's not. Throughout the film, the characters are seen in their beds, or lying lazily on the beach or next to a pool, as if the whole film is this ongoing group dream, one they can't wake from.

The richness of the film’s central metaphor is so great. There's the obvious STD angle, but I find the central conceit even richer and scarier as a symbol of inescapable psychological trauma. True, the sex that es the "ghost" to Jay is consensual. But the scenes that follow are anything but, and even if IT FOLLOWS strongly suggests there is a legitimately supernatural presence chasing these kids, the film works just as well as story of the fallout of this horrific kidnapping that one girl endures. Afterwards her physical wounds heal but the psychic scars linger, and almost anything can set them off; a boring class lecture, a swim in a pool, or becoming intimate with another boy she likes. It's sort of "Trigger Warning: The Movie."

The take on teenage sexuality is right on the money, too. I certainly could identify with Paul (Keir Gilchrist), the awkward lonely boy who is so infatuated with Jay (and so horny in general) that he'd risk literal death by sex ghost just to be with her. (At that age, when I was even more awkward and lonely that he is, I would have done exactly the same thing.) IT FOLLOWS absolutely nails a virgin's complete obsession with (and complete terror about) sex. And it seems to suggest that when people demonize something, they sometimes create an actual demon.